Disable Facebook Places

From Wired How-To Wiki

Facebook now lets you share your whereabouts with your friends by "checking in" to a location through Facebook Places.

But Places does have an odd quirk -- even if you don't want to share your location everywhere you go, your Facebook friends can share it for you. Just like they can tag your face in a photo, causing that photo to be associated with your account, your Facebook friends can tag you as being at a location, "checking you in" to a place on your behalf. The fact you're at a location will show up on your Wall, and your friends will see your face appear on the Facebook page of that bar, restaurant or strip club under a list of "People here now." You'll receive a notification that you've been tagged (just like a photo) and you can go into Places and un-tag (un-check-in) yourself.

But if you don't want to share your location at all, ever, with anyone, you can opt-out of Places entirely. Here's how to turn off Places in Facebook.

This article is part of a wiki anyone can edit. If you have advice to share, or if Facebook updates its Places privacy settings and these instructions have changed, please log in and contribute.

Step one

Log in to Facebook and go to the top of the page. Click on the Account menu and choose Privacy Settings from the drop-down list. You will see a grid with your current privacy settings.

In the list of defaults on the left, choose Custom. Now you should see a small "Customize Settings" link (with a pencil icon next to it) just below the grid. Click on it.

Step two

You're now on the custom settings page. The first block of settings is Things I Share. The last items in that block are "Places I check in" and "Include me in 'People Here Now' after I check in." Change "Places I check in" to "Only Me" -- this ensures that if you ever check in, only you will see it.

Also, uncheck the box next to "Include me in 'People Here Now' after I check in." This keeps your face from showing up on a list of people at a particular location.

Step three

Scroll down to the next section on the page, Things others share. The last item is "Friends can check me in to Places." Change this to "Disabled."

Now your friends can't check you into places on your behalf. The only person who can check you in somewhere is you, and if you do, the fact you're there won't be visible to anyone else on Facebook.

If you don't want to play the check-in game at all, you can now just ignore the Places features entirely and not worry about it.

Tips

You can further manage the privacy level of Places (and that of any other Facebook feature) inside the dialog you opened in step two. If you want to share your location with some people, or maybe just one person, you can set Places up to do that by restricting who sees your location to a smaller group, then blocking out additional people in that group.